Still about the banking situation in Brazil, news come out everyday about new joint-ventures including heavy weights on the public sector – ie. Nossa Caixa and Banco do Brasil. The Financial Times gave a note about the consolidation process running at full throttle in the country.

Brazil’s banks are preparing for a wave of consolidation following this week’s merger of Itaú and Unibanco to create the biggest bank in South America. Brazil has about 150 banks, many of them small players concentrating on a single line of business such as car loans or payroll-linked loans, areas that have grown quickly in line with rising employment and wages.

“Smaller banks have been seeing growth of 30 or 40 per cent a year,” says Ceres Lisboa, banking sector analyst in São Paulo at Moody’s, the international credit rating agency. “That’s over. They’ll have to reinvent themselves.”

Dozens of these smaller banks will be snapped up or forced to retreat into niche markets. Banco do Brasil, the federally-owned bank that was Brazil’s biggest before the latest merger, and Bradesco, formerly the biggest private-sector bank, are expected to scurry for acquisitions as they try to regain their dominance.

Consolidation will be helped by recent government measures to inject liquidity into the banking system as the global financial crisis has unfolded. The process should also be orderly as Brazil’s banking system remains solid, thanks to relatively low levels of lending and the fact little credit is sourced overseas.